


A Beast of Himself

by krakenmyheart



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-10
Updated: 2019-03-10
Packaged: 2019-11-14 18:07:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18057440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/krakenmyheart/pseuds/krakenmyheart
Summary: Diego learns something new about his powers. He sharpens it like a blade. A transition from Number Two to The Kraken.





	A Beast of Himself

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to write my own take on TV!Diego discovering his ability to hold his breath and using it as a way to become something more than he was before. It's very difficult for me to detach the character from water imagery, so I embraced that, slightly blurring between show and comic. Warning for some light depictions of drowning and like. child abuse/neglect. (kind of par for the course with this series).

Diego was sixteen when he stopped breathing in his sleep. It had been weeks, apparently. Erratic and undisciplined. A few minutes here and there. He hadn’t noticed it, but dad did. Dad noticed everything with his machines and his observations. His eyes watched Diego with a gleam behind the monocle, like he was a lab rat. A hypothesis to be researched. Just a number, not a name.

They sat in his office, silent for a long time. Diego knew better than to interrupt it, though it didn’t mean that sometimes he didn’t want to try—to scream and thrash and let loose all those words that built up and burned in his throat. Instead he curled his fingers, finding the flesh of his palms beneath his nails. It felt like punishment being there, waiting for the moment the old man changed his mind and sent him away. Sometimes that was worse, despite it all. Heat pooled into Diego’s hands, and the lost words sank back down into his stomach with a bitter edge.

Dad, behind his desk, pushed a leather bound notebook to the side and let out a breath, rigid and emotionless.

“We shall try something new with your training.”

That was the end of the conversation. 

Blood spotted Diego’s palms.

A day later he stood in front of an empty glass tank with thick walls, only a few feet higher than he was. Water crashed inside from separate hoses, swirling and pooling at the bottom, battering against itself like a war zone as it slowly filled to the top.

Diego took a step back. He couldn’t hear anything over the water droning on inside his ears, or his heart pounding hard against his chest. Hargreeves stood like a statue beside him, hands clasped patiently behind his back, notebook tucked beneath his arm. His calm was intimidating, infuriating, but Diego was too focused on the tank to be angry. He knew what would happen next. The thought filled him with dread but he forced his body still and straightened his shoulders, his stare lost within the cascading water. He tried to imagine what it felt like to be crushed beneath it, what it might be like to drown. His chest went tight. A pressure in his lungs stabbed through him and he gasped, trying to swallow it down again but only water filled him up, choking and choking until everything turned black.

The water in the tank stopped short of the top and the sudden stillness brought him back to reality as he quietly tried to catch his breath.

Dad didn’t seem to care.

“You are to stay submerged for as long as you are able,” he said, wrapping a harness around Diego’s shoulders, complete with sensors and other things he didn’t like the look of. “You will be pulled out only when you are out of breath, not a moment sooner.”

He couldn’t find the words to protest, not that it would do him any good. Trying to push away that fear of defeat, he swallowed down the leftover remnants of doubt and slowly made his way up the ladder to the top of the tank. The water was clear looking in, still and tranquil now, and under different circumstances maybe that would’ve been reassuring but the sound of crashing waves still filled his head like flies on a corpse. 

Diego dipped a hand in first. The water wasn’t hot, or cold, it just _was_ , but a shock ran through his bones all the same. 

Hargreeves looked up at him waiting, and tapped his watch to hurry him along without mercy. 

He hesitated once more, the cold stare of his father drilling into him before finally he closed his eyes. Sucking in as much oxygen as he could, Diego leapt into the depth and let the water envelope him like a second skin.

The quiet beneath the surface was a different world, a better one, maybe. He sat with it for a minute, trying to hold onto that feeling but when Diego opened his eyes, dad stood on the other side of the glass, holding his notebook open with one hand, writing something with the other. Suddenly it felt less like a tank and more like a display case. 

Diego turned to get away from him and noticed the top was closed off now, and there was nowhere for him to go. The water spun around him as he moved, tightening against his body, threatening to squeeze the life from him. A pressure grew in his chest. Pain stabbed at his lungs. His head went dizzy, blind with panic and rage and fear. Instinctively, he swam to the top, hoping to find a pocket of air but there was only water holding him down, pulling at his limbs until he lost control of his body. Flailing now, thrashing, striking glass. Sinking. 

Fire bloomed in his chest, growing and growing until it couldn’t be contained.

He opened his mouth to scream and water doused it, slipping down his throat and freezing him up inside. Motionless, the world turned around him. Through blurry vision he saw dad scratching notes onto paper, his mouth a hard line of disappointment.

The image stayed with him as everything else faded into darkness.

Diego woke on the floor, choking on more than water. He curled into a ball and puked the excess from his guts until he could breathe again. Mom sat beside him, quiet and concerned the way she stayed around dad. She placed a hand on Diego’s shoulder as he heaved and gasped, but he twisted away, focusing angry eyes on Hargreeves, who continued to scrawl in his notebook.

“You wanted to let me drown,” Diego said, wiping his mouth with the back of a hand. His words were breathless, shaking. “You just watched.”  
Dad didn’t look up when he spoke, unconcerned with giving him the attention.

“I made it clear you would not be pulled out until you ran out of breath completely. I did not foresee it would happen so soon.” He slammed the book shut and finally met Diego’s eyes cold. “Tomorrow you will continue with combat training as usual, and that is all.”

He left before Diego could argue, a hundred curses waiting at the back of his tongue. 

Mom placed her hand on his shoulder once more, and this time he let it stay.

Diego didn’t tell the others what had happened, though none of them bothered to hide their confusion when he walked back to his room soaking wet. Klaus made a joke about falling into the toilet, but Diego slammed his door shut before he could finish the sentence. It was in the confines of his bedroom where he finally let himself react. Knives flew into the walls all around him until he had no more left to throw. Then he ripped them out and did it again and again and again and by the time he finished, he was panting, gasping at the tightness of his throat. Stars flashed behind his eyes. He sat on the edge of his bed, tried to work through it but the sound, the feel of the crashing water drowned him from the inside out. 

The door opened and mom came in, eyes lit with concern, but not panic. She sat beside him gently, ignoring the knives in the walls and the cuts on his fingers that still bled fresh. 

“Breathe, Diego,” she said, her voice a hum. “In and out, like this.”

She mimicked the gesture—though she did not breathe—and he followed her direction until he settled and the waters calmed inside of him. 

“There you have it,” she said with a smile that beamed. “See? All it takes is a little control.”

Diego took in a long breath, savoring how easily it came to him. He let it out slow, and with it the storm that had possessed him, like crashing ocean waves against jagged rocks. He could see it behind his eyes, the white caps of the water, the swirling, angry mess. He fought against the tension in his bones, pushed himself to relax. The tide always came in gently, soothing against a fractured shore. 

Mom was patient while they sat, forgiving of his silence. She was good to him, proud, even when she didn’t have to be. Even when there wasn’t a reason. After a moment she reached into her apron for a few stray bandaids, things she always kept at the ready. Placing them into his hands, she gave a reassuring nod. 

“I know you can do it, Diego.”

The words meant more to him then he could say, but he had a feeling that she understood, she usually did. He repeated that sentence like a mantra once she left, wrapping his bloodied fingers and paying close attention to the way his chest rose and fell with the air in his lungs.

All it takes is a little control, he reminded himself, and kept reminding himself each day as he continued to try, holding his breath longer and longer. Sometimes by mere seconds, sometimes by more, until his chest felt like it would burst from all that pressure. He practiced in his room, and at the dinner table. He made hold-your-breath bets with Luther for whatever change they had in their pockets and quietly delighted when he won. The others still didn’t know what he was doing—what he could do—and he didn’t feel like telling yet, not before he could show them something worth seeing, something that would impress even the unimpressible. 

He had made it close to fifteen minutes without oxygen, though the strain was painful at eleven, he could push through, fists tight at his sides, thinking about dad’s face when he found out. At thirteen minutes thirty his head would go light, but he was starting to like the rush of it. Fourteen minutes and forty-two seconds after the fact he finally gasped for air, but a smile stuck to his lips and he started again.

When he hit twenty minutes he drew a bath. He locked the door behind him. Water crashed heavy into the tub, splashing up against him as he sat on the edge, gaze lost in the violent fall from the faucet. His heartbeat quickened to match the pace of the waves. He hadn’t practiced under water since the tank, since the drowning. A rock sank down his throat. His arms felt heavy at his sides, dragging him down low into the darkness, body twisting helpless. Cold. Alone.

He shut the water off with a shaking hand, breath unsteady on his tongue. 

All it takes is a little control.

Slowly, he took a breath. Let it out. Another, and then another until he felt right again, and when he was calm he stopped completely, holding it in against his teeth. The absence of oxygen was comfortable, in it’s own way. Silent and wordless, like the space beneath the water. He swung his body over the edge and settled into the tub, sinking down inch by inch, receding below the surface until everything else disappeared.

His muscles tightened on instinct, expecting the worst. Remembering it. His heartbeat fought against him, pounding in his ears with a vengeance and Diego kept his eyes squeezed shut hoping to will the fear away. The hard porcelain around him felt like a casket. His hands shot up from the water, and clutched the sides of the tub until his knuckles went white but he forced himself to stay put, pushing down against the urge to scream. Jaw clenched, he tasted blood. Somehow, the tang of it soothed him. 

He loosened his fingers from the side and brought them down, holding himself around the chest until his hands quit shaking and the rest of him followed suit. He felt the bottom beneath him, knew that there was nowhere for him to sink. The water settled, draped over him like a blanket. The world couldn’t touch him now.

With his mother’s words in mind, Diego opened his eyes and started a count from zero.

Twenty-six minutes later, he sat up, let the water roll down his face and finally took a breath.

Days went by before he found himself again in dad’s study, shoulders stiff and straight, something sharp in his throat that only grew as he held his breath in. The wristwatch dad wore ticked away in the silence, keeping a running track of how long it’d been, but only one of them was counting.

When Diego finally tried to speak, he lost the word somewhere before it could form. He closed his mouth. Maybe dad didn’t notice. His eyes were cast down, reading across something in front of him. He let his breath out slow and tried again.

“I want to go back in the tank,” he said, trying to find his confidence along the way. “I can do it this time. I’ve been practicing.”

He hoped for a reaction, but dad rarely gave him one. The clock ticked down like a heartbeat.

“There is no need for you to waste my time, or yours for that matter.” Dad kept his head down, the words as casual as they could ever be, but biting somehow, laced with venom. “It was a mistake to indulge such a useless skill to begin with.”

“But I—”

“That is final, Number Two.”

Diego’s fists tightened. Dad still wouldn’t look at him. He found it hard to breathe and so he stopped. An ocean raged somewhere deep, crashing against his insides, drowning out the sound of the seconds ticking down and all the warnings that told him to walk away before it consumed him. The dam burst against the pressure. The waters flooded free. 

“Fuck you,” he said, tone as fierce as the waves. 

Hargreeves' eyes shot up. He froze, caught off guard by the ease in which the words left Diego’s mouth. They both were, but Diego didn’t question it. He liked seeing the look of shock on dad’s face and he returned it with a sneer, one that said many things, but maybe most of all, it said, “You can’t control me.”

It was the first time he cursed at his father. But it wasn’t the last.

A year later, when Diego turned his back on the academy, the first place he ran to was the coast. He had seen the ocean from afar, but he had never walked on the beach. Dad was good at stifling opportunities, suffocating anything that might strike freedom or happiness. Or hope. 

The sand sank beneath Diego’s feet, claiming him with each step, drawing him closer to a home he never knew. The sun had set hours ago, and the beach was empty for miles. In the distance, the waves peaked and plateaued beneath the moonlight. A chaotic dance, relentless in its savagery. Diego couldn’t take his eyes away, pulled forward until the water rolled against his ankles. Like a welcoming hand, gentle in comparison to the raging sea.

The cold stung him at first, but he kept moving. His breath hitched in his throat, he didn’t need it anyway and by the time the water came over his head he didn’t miss it, either. The world went out from under him and the waves swayed him back and forth. He let the current carry him, take him wherever it wanted to go. There was a trust between them now, a bond. The water rushed through his veins. It spilled into him, but not with malice—with purpose, and in the dark depth of the sea a word repeated against the waves. New and familiar all at once. 

A name, not a number.

He still wasn’t breathing when the current brought him back to the shore. His eyes opened to the blue light of dawn and the concerned look of a stranger standing above him.

“Thought you might be dead,” they said, a long stick grasped in spindly hands. 

Diego stood, patting the excess sand from his pants. Finally letting the oxygen back into his lungs, he could smell the sea salt on his own skin. 

He wasn’t dead, but he was something.

Reborn, he decided, looking back to the ocean like an old friend. 

The waves rolled like thunder, calling his name once again. 

Kraken, they said. And he could feel their power rage inside his bones.


End file.
